Feeling inspired, I decided to try this out in Python. Unfortunately, while lambdas are supported in Python, they are purely functional, meaning it’s impossible to get side effects out of the recursive process like printing “LOVE” every time. You’d have to generate an infinitely long string of these and then print it out:

(printing “LOVE” an infinite number of times using named recursion in Python)

Feeling even more inspired, I decided to tackle the task of translating this into PostScript, which is totally one of the awesomest programming languages ever, even though many people who are familiar with it don’t realize its programming complexity and dismiss it as a simple page description language … ahem. (It’s the language behind PS files, the precursor to PDF.)

And behold, it worked!

(printing “LOVE” an infinite number of times using named recursion in PostScript)

this is a DIALOGUE on the nature of computation brought to you by °C-ute or actually just THE AIRI AND MAIMI SHOW cuz everybody else is like wut im a computer n00b i dont even know how to type zomgwtf but AIRI AND MAIMI are like SUPER FREAKING GENIUSES or something and they totally know everything about computers and programming and data structures and algorithms and complexity theory and all that

because contrary to popular belief °C-ute is actually short for

°COMPUTE

thats right THATS A DASH your supposed to fill in the missing letters duh

(betcha didnt know that huh?)

WUT

oh hay look its °C-ute in the middle of their STRUCTURE AND INTERPRETATION OF COMPUTER PROGRAMS class and today their going over HIGHER ORDER PROCEDURES and how to call a procedure using another procedure as an argument or even reflexively using the procedure itself

so erika and mai are like WUUUHHHHHH???? but airi and maimi totally know wuts going on cuz their like SUPER FREAKING GENIUSES and their already jumping ahead to next weeks topic…..

and airi goes hey check this out zomglolololololol

… one level of embedding …

….. TWO levels of embedding …..

……. FOUR LEVELS OF EMBEDDING ……..

……… EIGHT LEVELS OF EMBEDDING IS THAT AMAZING OR WUT OMG???!!! ………

XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

and maimis like WUT

and airis like RECURSION B****ES!!!

but maimis like STFU N00B that terminates after only eight iterations

betcha cant do an infinite loop wut

so airi sez OH YEAH WELL CHECK THIS OUT

(define (FOREVER x)
(display x) (FOREVER x))
(FOREVER "LOVE ")

SEE IT PRINTS OUT LOVE AND RECURSIVELY CALLS ITSELF SO IT CAN PRINT OUT LOVE AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

its like LOVE …….. FOREVER!!!!!

wut

FOREVER LOVE

get it? GET IT??!!!

but maimis like SRSLY zomgrofl THAT IS SO TRIVIAL IT MAKES THE TRIVIAL GROUP LOOK NONCOMMUTATIVE lol

NONCOMMUTATIVE?????!!!!!!!

I OWN TSUUGAKU VECTOR☂

I AM THE LIVING EMBODIMENT OF THE INNER PRODUCT OF ANY TWO VECTORS IN A HILBERT SPACE

cuz thats like CONJUGATE SYMMETRY

which when restricted to a real scalar field means that under the inner product any two vectors COMMUTE

C-ute’s new single, “LA LA LA Shiawase no Uta”, has a lot of la‘s, including an amazingly long ending sequence of 124la‘s, as maiZe noted not too long ago. While this song no doubt contains more la‘s than any other Hello! Project release to date, it turns out that it does not have the longest sequence of consecutive la‘s. Any preliminary guesses as to what song holds that title? :-o

So, stricken as I was with curiosity, I wondered what other long sequences of la‘s there are, and Googling through ProjectHello, I put together a list of the fifteen longest la sequences, not counting those that appear within songs containing even longer la sequences. Not that all those other nonsense syllables out there are insignificant, of course, but la seems to be the most common, by a landslide.

I now present the 15 longest la sequences in the Hello! Project library, or at least those I could find, as I have no intention of checking to see if I’ve missed anything. In video format even! Now you can listen along for an entire whopping six and a half minutes of nonstop la-ness (to improve the flow, I cut out some of the fadeout sections, so not all the la‘s are there, but there are still close to a thousand left). Here they are from shortest (19 la‘s) to longest (136 la‘s). Some of them contain other utterances besides la, but they’re not part of the main melody, so I don’t consider them to be interrupting the flow of la‘s. If you’re still breathing when it’s over, you’re better off than I am.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, while I love compiling rankings of works released by Hello! Project, I refuse to give a subjective ranking of individual people, for various reasons. But Paul Thomas’s new poll is just so shiny I couldn’t resist…

So here is my objective ranking of Morning Musume, Berryz Koubou, and ºC-ute, using criteria that (I assume) no fan actually uses, consciously or not, to determine their favorites, though the near-perfect (except Kamei) spectral order of MoMusu is rather interesting and makes me suspect someone on the inside might be using a similar criterion to assign costume colors…

Sure, it might be a coincidence, but really, the probability of at least n – 1 out of n elements randomly appearing in a specified order is .* In MoMusu’s case, n = 9, so the odds are about 1 in 5582.77. Hmm…

But before it actually begins, I’m going to hand out some honorable mentions. In fact I’m going to hand out 20 honorable mentions. This is actually a shameless, thinly veiled excuse to produce a Top 120 countdown without bothering to rank or discuss the bottom 20. But still … these were the noteworthy videos that almost made the cut. And there were some pretty difficult decisions to make, so I feel they all deserve a mention.